BMW.SG | BMW Singapore Owners Community The Ultimate BMW Community – Established Since 2001
The BMW iX3 40 is the entry point to BMW’s Neue Klasse electric SUV, and it may well be the sweet spot of the whole range. Drop down from the twin-motor flagship, and you swap the 113kWh pack for an 87kWh one, with BMW quoting up to 388 miles in the M Sport trim tested here. The front motor disappears too, leaving 320bhp and 500Nm driving the rear wheels alone. On a spec sheet that reads like a downgrade. Behind the wheel it reads like a bargain.
The 40 clears 62mph in 5.9 seconds, a single second adrift of the range-topper, and you would need the two cars nose to nose to feel the gap. It pulls hard from any speed. The chassis is the star, staying taut and flat through quick changes of direction, with fat rear tyres keeping the tail obediently in line despite the missing front driveshafts. Steering is crisp and well weighted, though the four-spoke wheel takes a few car parks to get used to. The adaptive regen is cleverer still, scanning the road ahead and shedding speed for bends, junctions and slower traffic before your foot has moved.
Step inside and the cost-cutting simply is not there. Every iX3 runs Panoramic iDrive, the full-width display laid along the base of the windscreen, and it genuinely rewrites how you read a cabin. Speed, navigation and customisable widgets all sit in your eyeline rather than behind a wheel rim. It looks busy for the first half hour and turns instinctive after that. The driving position is lower and more saloon-like than the SUV shape suggests, and we struggled to find a single scratchy plastic anywhere. LED headlights, flush door handles, an automatic tailgate, memory seats, wireless charging and Digital Key Plus all come as standard.
There are compromises, just small ones. The ride stays firm and fidgets a little at low speed, the price you pay for a body that refuses to lean. Driving Assistant Plus can tug at the wheel with a bit too much enthusiasm until you slacken its settings. The M Sport seats are over-bolstered for our taste. Swapping the standard 20-inch alloys for the optional 22s, on the other hand, makes almost no difference to the way it rides, so fill your boots.
Speaking of boots, there are 520 litres back there plus under-floor storage; the rear bench reclines and splits 40:20:40 to open up 1,750 litres, and a 305kW peak means 10 to 80 per cent takes around 21 minutes. Only the frunk disappoints, still small despite the empty bay where a front motor would sit. Real-world running lands just under 300 miles, roughly 50 shy of the flagship. Given that everything else is identical, the 40 is the one to have.
